CARACAS, Venezuela – Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced on Friday that India will resume purchasing Venezuelan oil now that the Biden administration has lifted oil and gas sanctions on the rogue socialist country.
India is the world’s third-largest oil buyer, importing roughly 80 percent of its crude oil from international markets. India stopped importing Venezuelan oil in 2020 after the United States, during the administration of former President Donald Trump, imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company in 2019. The sanctions were a response to years of continued human rights violations by socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and his regime against their own people.
The Biden administration granted a broad oil and gas sanctions relief package to the Maduro regime in October that allows PDVSA to once again sell Venezuelan oil in American and international markets. The relief was awarded after representatives of the socialist regime and the Venezuelan “opposition” Unitary Platform signed an agreement in Barbados with vague promises about holding a “free and fair” presidential election next year.
Over the past two months, and despite being a crucial condition of the sanctions relief package deal, Maduro and his socialist regime have shown no sign of committing to a “free and fair” presidential election in 2024.
“We always buy from Venezuela,” Puri told reporters on Friday. “It’s when Venezuela came under sanctions that they were not able to supply.”
Before the sanctions in 2019, India was reportedly importing upwards of 10 million barrels of Venezuelan oil per month. Puri noted that India is home to oil refineries capable of processing Venezuela’s heavy crude oil.
Puri announced that Indian companies Reliance Industries, Indian Oil Corp, and HPCL-Mittal Energy have already secured cargoes of Venezuelan oil. The first shipments, reportedly measured at 4 million barrels, are due in February.
“Many of our refineries, including Paradip, are capable of using that heavy Venezuelan oil. And we will buy Venezuelan oil,” Puri said.
During an oil industry event held in November, Puri suggested the possibility of India once again buying Venezuelan oil, stressing that his country will buy “from wherever we can get cheaper oil.”
Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world at more than 300 billion barrels. The South American nation has seen its oil production capabilities dramatically reduced and its entire oil industry pushed to the brink of total ruin in recent years as a result of nearly 25 years of socialist mismanagement.
Although the Maduro regime has repaired some refineries and restored some of its lost oil refining capabilities with the aid of Iran, Venezuela’s oil output is still far from the 3.5 million bpd (barrels per day) it was able to produce in 1998, prior to the start of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez’s first term in 1999 and the rise to power of the socialist Bolivarian Revolution. According to OPEC estimates, Venezuela was able to output 751,000 barrels per day (bpd) in October.
The Biden sanctions relief allowed the rogue socialist regime to estimate a 27-percent income increase in its 2024 budget, according to reports published this week. The Maduro regime expects that the income from PDVSA’s oil exports and taxes paid by the state oil company will cover roughly $11.9 billion of the $20.5 billion the socialist regime is expecting to spend in the coming year.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
